


Ecce

by Nemainofthewater



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Elias doesn't care for the results, Elias is a bad person, Elias sows the seeds of his own demise, Gen, Manipulation, Pre-Canon, Retrospectively making martin's life worse, build-your-own-avatar: beholding edition, or something like that, sorry Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 11:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19722460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemainofthewater/pseuds/Nemainofthewater
Summary: Was it easier to raise a Chosen than to create one? An interesting conundrum, and a question that he would be able to answer. And should the outcome be unsuitable…well. The Eye was a hungry god. And the Watcher’s Crown far enough away that he would be able to procure an appropriate Archivist in time for the ritual.In which Elias is awful and incredibly manipulative. Are we surprised?





	Ecce

**Author's Note:**

> I finally caught with all the Magnus Archives episodes today! And in celebration I...wrote a ficlet that probably only interests me? This is pre-canon, kind of an AU and also sort of canon-compliant, in that I would be surprised if it had happened, but there's nothing that directly contradicts it.  
> Warnings for manipulation, and Elias being Elias.

Elias was not ashamed to admit that it had been the Desolation that had given him the idea. That is to say, he wasn’t going to go around shouting it from the rooftops, but on the other hand, he wouldn’t deny it outright if asked. The trick was making sure that nobody asked directly.

Was it easier to raise a Chosen than to create one? An interesting conundrum, and a question that he would be able to answer. And should the outcome be unsuitable…well. The Eye was a hungry god. And the Watcher’s Crown far enough away that he would be able to procure an appropriate Archivist in time for the ritual.

Nonetheless, he chose carefully.

His first stop was the numerous universities that London contained, genially visiting the campuses in the form of a potential sponsor and asking to meet their most gifted students. The Deans fell over themselves to accommodate him: despite its rather…odd reputation, the Magnus Institute was an old and prestigious Institute, and one that any student or recent graduate would be lucky to work at. It was useless. Oh, he met intelligent students, but none of them with that spark. That curiosity to the detriment of everything else. Not amongst the candidates thrust at him in any case, who, Elias assumed, had been chosen due to their family connections rather than any inherent talent. Some of them would have been adequate: all of them would be missed. And Elias was not prepared to open the Institute to potential scrutiny for what was nothing more than a whim.

So he cast his net wider. Opened his mind to his God and let the Eye guide him where it would.

It brought him to a library. The Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre to be exact, and to a young woman surrounded by Keats and Shelley, making absent-minded notes in a small notebook with a plain biro.

It was easy enough to See her: Miriam Sagan, 23, shop assistant. No family to speak of, only an elderly aunt in Dorset who occasionally sent a Christmas card, when she could remember what year it was. No friends or significant others, preferring to spend her time amongst the stacks of the library. Four flatmates, but none that knew, or really cared to know her. Perfect. She wouldn’t be missed.

Her mind blazed with a bright spark, a need to know that had been battered down and almost extinguished by the realities of life as a poor, working class girl, unable to afford university or any other form of higher education. No doubt in a few years it would be fully extinguished, leaving nothing behind but a faint ache and burgeoning resentment toward an inherently unfair society, but for now it was bright enough and suitable for his purpose.

The next piece of the puzzle was easier still: Elias had had an eye on him for a while. As a potential Archival assistant, true, but it was easy enough to find those. James Blackwood wad nothing special. Oh, intelligent enough, and curious, and, as with most working at the Institute, marked by their Patron. But his key attribute was the malleability of his mind. It made it easy to Elias to slip in and out at will, carefully examining what few thoughts were present, and implanting his own. The desire for companionship. The need to visit a certain library on a certain day.

And really, Miriam Sagan was pretty enough in her own way that Elias was able to let nature do the rest. Well, nature and an uncharacteristic forgetfulness on Miriam’s part when it came to taking her birth control pills.

When James Blackwood requested leave for a personal, family emergency two months later, he granted it. And seven months later he personally arranged a traffic accident that gridlocked the entirety of central London, and trapped the now Miriam Blackwood in the British Library, where she had taken to wandering during her pregnancy, driven by an urge that she did not fully understand.

Martin Hugo Blackwood was born in a small, private backroom of the British Library, irrevocably staining the carpet, though, Elias thought, considering its colour, perhaps that was for the best. Looking at the infant from his desk at the Magnus Institute, Elias was unable to See anything particularly impressive in either his countenance apart from perhaps a budding resemblance to his father.

Over the next few years, Elias Watched as baby Martin grew from an average toddler to an average child. He showed no especial propensity for knowledge, although he did have an inexplicable fondness for poetry: his mother’s doing, no doubt. When he was eight years old, Elias, now risen to Head of the Institute (again) asked James to bring his child into work with him. 

Standing in front of his desk, Martin Blackwood was no more impressive in person. Oh, he was curious enough, casting quick, darting looks around the office, but it was a child’s curiosity, cursory and tempered by crippling shyness. He didn’t exhibit any of his mother’s tendencies, nothing pushing him to seek understanding or new knowledge of the outside world: instead his mind turned in on itself, protecting him from the cruelties of the outside world in its insularity. There was a seed there, the boy was Marked by the Beholding but the seed had been determinedly ignored and left to languish in unfertile ground.

Useless.

Well, even negative results were still results.

Elias sent the boy away after a scarce ten minutes and withdrew his influence from the boy’s parents: there was no point in wasting the mental energy on maintaining the marriage of two eminently unsuitable people when there were other things to be done, other candidates to seek, and an Archivist to corral.

Still. Waste not, want not. The Eye was possessive of those that belonged to it, after all. No doubt in another decade or so, Martin Blackwood would make a perfectly adequate archival assistant.

Settling down, Elias cast the failure out of his mind, and Stretched. Onward and upward. There was a boy in Bournemouth that showed promise…

**Author's Note:**

> I just kind of like the idea that Elias accidentally created his successor/supplanter, and didn't notice because he had written Martin off at an extremely early age as useless.
> 
> I am on Tumblr as [Nemainofthewater ](https://nemainofthewater.tumblr.com)


End file.
